Oh Writing class...

This writing class has been full of surprises. The biggest one was that I was actually able to write about topics that I enjoyed and was interested in. That rarely happens in a writing class, at least for myself. Critically looking at the media and the stories they produce was something I found interesting and almost fun to do. My biggest take away from this class would have to be the ability to recognize the different ways in which news stories change and affect the people that read them. Also to be able to see the ways in which social media/ different mediums of news affect who reads them/ how/ and why. These are skills that I will be able to take with me throughout different writing classes and my life in general. It is always important to be able know what a news article or blog is saying, where it came from, and what it will do in the future. Never forget to follow what’s going on in the world around you.

Second and Final Writing essay

Colin McMaster

WRIT

Proffesor Leake

27 February 2012

KU v. MU: The Border War and the Ending of an Era

Kids in the state of Kansas are taught from a young age a few things. One of those things being, nothing good ever comes from Missouri. This is especially true when one is talking about the University of Missouri, and the person talking is a University of Kansas fan. The Kansas and Missouri basketball rivalry has been going on for 105 years, but actually sense the civil war in all honesty. It is the oldest rivalry in sports west of the Mississippi with The University of Kansas leading the series 172-95. However, now in the midst of massive conference realignment all around the country, the Missouri tigers have decided to tuck tail and leave the Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference (SEC). They are not alone, and this conference realignment has become one of the biggest topics in all of college sports. The different sides behind the ending of the border war can be seen through the stories movement through the “press Sphere”.

David Ubben, a writer for ESPN.com, published an article first in November and then republished close to the same article again February 21^st about the breaking up of the Big 12 Conference. His background in covering the Big 12 and other big named programs helped him in analyzing the situation as well as it seems to have helped him land some key quotes from athletic directors and coaches. Ubben begins by explaining that Texas Christian University and West Virginia are the first teams to join the Big 12 sense it was first conceived; and at the same time the Big 12 has lost four teams: Nebraska, Colorado, Texas A&M, and Missouri the most recent. He uncovers this information, in the sense of Joseph Harris, by explaining the significance behind each of these teams leaving.

Ubben expands upon the different circumstances of Texas A&M and Missouri leaving by comparing them to their “replacements” West Virginia and TCU. He does this by talking about their football schedules and successes. For instance, “TCU won't make winning 11 games an annual occurrence in the Big 12, but would Texas A&M have done much better with a similar schedule?” (Ubben) Here he is trying to show that TCU’s unprecedented success in the Mountain West conference will not be exactly the same in the big 12, but they will be more likely to succeed than A&M has been. Ubben expands the reach of this article by not only including Big 12 factors but also including statements such as, “the Big 12's most frustrating question -- why can't Texas A&M be a national power? -- is the SEC's problem now.”(Ubben) This was most likely included to in a way, reach out to readers from different conferences and get them to start asking tougher questions as to why these teams are joining their league.

Next we have an article published at sportsillustrated.com by Seth Davis right on the heels of Missouri’s defeat of the Jayhawks 74-71 in their first regular season basketball match up. Davis begins off the back talking about Mizzou’s decision to leave the Big 12 and the commentary of the announcers at the game. After sharing that Dick Vitale and Jay Bilas both want to, and expect KU and MU to continue playing out of conference Davis exclaims. “I'm not so sure I share Bilas' optimism. Nor do I share Vitale's hope. I'm not just okay with seeing this rivalry come to an end. I actually want it to.” (Davis) He goes on explain his own position and countering the announcers by saying, “Why am I being such a killjoy? Because as much as I love a great rivalry, I loathe conference expansion even more.” (Davis) Here Davis makes his point that there is a bigger picture behind Missouri leaving, and that is the Big 12 was seriously injured by losing four relatively strong schools to other conferences and it takes more than a I’m sorry for everything to become okay again.

Davis brings into play different sources such as Missouri and Kansas’s athletic directors, KU’s coach Bill Self, and fans from the Kansas side to explain what is and will happen to the rivalry. The hard conclusion of his article is that for now, it’s dead. However, “Auburn and Alabama quit playing each other in football back in 1907. It only took 41 years... -- for those teams to agree to play each other again. I doubt it will take four decades for Kansas and Missouri... but I also doubt it will happen anytime soon. Nor should it” (Davis). It will take time for the wounds to heal, but that’s the beauty of time it heals all wounds and they will play again.

In “The Quad” a New York Times sports blog; author Christoph Fuhrmans writes just before Kansas and Missouri’s last regular season meeting that, “I, for one, will miss the hate.”(Fuhrmans) Fuhrmans is abundantly playing to the emotional side of Kansas. It couldn’t have been more obvious except he slipped in that he was a graduate of the University of Kansas in 1996. His take on the story is one of history that builds every time the teams meet. He writes one day before the final regular season playing of the Border War, “If Saturday’s game is the last time the two schools play each other, it will be a fitting tribute to the end of one of the best rivalries in all of college sports” (Fuhrmans). He is trying to appeal to the emotional side of the fans who do not want to see the ending of an era. Besides that he brings in the opinions of Seth Davis who was just talked about and an interview with Kansas Coach Bill Self with STLtoday.com.

Now looking at the “PHOG Blog”, an all things KU athletics blog site we see the author named Mark talk deeply and emotionally about the Kansas-Missouri falling out. He takes about a paragraph and a half to talk about how many basketball commentators and writers have been talking about how KU and mizzou should continue their rivalry games even though mizzou is leaving. He then takes almost the reminder of the post to very carefully say, “There is an old story about a man who had two sons. One joined the SEC. The other became vice-president of the United States. Neither was ever heard from again.” (Mark) In his not so humble opinion Missouri has slapped the Big 12 in the face, and for what reason other than to join a conference where they don’t belong.

The “PHOG Blog” is an extremely bias source, but is also particularly accurate when it comes to things KU related. Mark uses a good about of countering to bring his points to the surface along with straight arguing for the other side. He brings up the points that it’s a very animosity driven rivalry, and that this year alone more attention has been paid to the games because of mizzou leaving the Big 12. However he brings up that:

‘They see two tremendous basketball games and a fight for a conference championship in the final year the two programs are in the same conference and, apparently, believe that this is the norm. It’s not. The norm is KU fighting for a conference championship against some team not named Mizzou: e.g., Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma St, Iowa St.’ (Mark).

This is a very good use of countering to show the true colors of how the Big 12 is supposed to work. However in the end after the animosity the author does come to terms with what many people are thinking and see that if Missouri, somehow, keeps fielding competitive teams he can see the angst in letting the rivalry die.

All in all it is sad to see something I have grown up watching and learning to hate leave. It seems as if the particular circumstances have made it even worse with Missouri being the fourth team to leave the Big 12 in a year. The death of debatably the best rivalry in college sports is overwhelmingly due to the new trend of conference realignment which directly translates into money. I know at least the author of the “PHOG Blog” would agree with me when I say that money and the idea of supper conferences needs to be taken out of collegiate sports. Looking at the different ways that the story of Missouri’s leaving the Big 12 has changed through different avenues of media it can be seen that this issue is one that will not die soon.

Works Cited

Mark. "Phog Blog." Web log post. Phog Blog. 26 Feb. 2012. Web. 26 Feb. 2012. .

Davis, Seth. "Kansas Right in Refusal to Schedule Missouri after This Season, More."Kansas-Missouri Demonstrates Pitfalls of Conference Realignment. 6 Feb. 2012. Web. 20 Feb. 2012. .

FUHRMANS, CHRISTOPH FUHRMANS. "Hating You Was Easy, Losing You Is Hard."The Quad. New York Times, 24 Feb. 2012. Web. Feb. 2012. .

Ubben, David. "New Big 12 Will Miss Rivalries, Not Results." Espn. 21 Feb. 2012. Web. Feb. 2012. .

essay 2 rough draft

Colin McMaster

WRIT

Proffesor Leake

27 February 2012

KU v. MU: The Border War and the Ending of an Era

Kids in the state of Kansas are taught from a young age a few things. One of those things being, nothing good ever comes from Missouri. This is especially true when one is talking about the University of Missouri, and the person talking is a University of Kansas fan. The Kansas and Missouri basketball rivalry has been going on for 105 years, but actually sense the civil war in all honesty. It is the oldest rivalry in sports west of the Mississippi with The University of Kansas leading the series 172-95. However, now in the midst of massive conference realignment all around the country, the Missouri tigers have decided to tuck tail and leave the Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference (SEC). They are not alone, and this conference realignment has become one of the biggest topics in all of college sports. The different sides behind the ending of the border war can be seen through the stories movement through the “press Sphere”.

David Ubben, a writer for ESPN.com, published an article first in November and then republished close to the same article again February 21^st about the breaking up of the Big 12 Conference. His background in covering the Big 12 and other big named programs helped him in analyzing the situation as well as it seems to have helped him land some key quotes from athletic directors and coaches. Ubben begins by explaining that Texas Christian University and West Virginia are the first teams to join the Big 12 sense it was conceived; and at the same time the Big 12 has lost four teams: Nebraska, Colorado, Texas A&M, and Missouri the most recent. He uncovers this information, in the sense of Joseph Harris, by explaining the significance behind each of these teams leaving.

Ubben expands upon the different circumstances of Texas A&M and Missouri leaving by almost comparing them to their “replacements” West Virginia and TCU. He does this by talking about their football schedules and success. For instance, “TCU won't make winning 11 games an annual occurrence in the Big 12, but would Texas A&M have done much better with a similar schedule?” (Ubben) Here he is trying to show that TCU’s unprecedented success in the Mountain West conference will not be exactly the same in the big 12, but they will be more likely to succeed than A&M has been. Ubben expands the reach of this article by not only including Big 12 factors but also including statements such as, “the Big 12's most frustrating question -- why can't Texas A&M be a national power? -- is the SEC's problem now.”(Ubben) This was most likely included to in a way, reach out to readers from different conferences and get them to start asking tougher questions as to why these teams are joining their league.

Next we have an article published at sportsillustrated.com by Seth Davis right on the heels of Missouri’s defeat of the Jayhawks 74-71 in their first regular season basketball match up. Davis begins off the back talking about Mizzou’s decision to leave the Big 12 and the commentary of the announcers at the game. After sharing that Dick Vitale and Jay Bilas both want to, and expect KU and MU to continue playing out of conference Davis exclaims. “I'm not so sure I share Bilas' optimism. Nor do I share Vitale's hope. I'm not just okay with seeing this rivalry come to an end. I actually want it to.” (Davis) He goes on explain his own position and countering the announcers by saying, “Why am I being such a killjoy? Because as much as I love a great rivalry, I loathe conference expansion even more.” (Davis) Here Davis makes his point that there is a bigger picture behind Missouri leaving, and that is the Big 12 was seriously injured by losing four relatively strong schools to other conferences and it takes more than a I’m sorry for everything to become okay again.

Davis brings into play different sources such as Missouri and Kansas’s athletic directors, KU’s coach Bill Self, and fans from the Kansas side to explain what is and will happen to the rivalry. The hard conclusion of his article is that for now, it’s dead. However, “Auburn and Alabama quit playing each other in football back in 1907. It only took 41 years... -- for those teams to agree to play each other again. I doubt it will take four decades for Kansas and Missouri... but I also doubt it will happen anytime soon. Nor should it” (Davis).

In “The Quad” a New York Times sports blog author Christoph Fuhrmans writes that, “I, for one, will miss the hate.”(Fuhrmans) Fuhrmans is abundantly playing to the side of Kansas. It couldn’t have been more obvious except he slipped in that he was a graduate of the University of Kansas in 1996. His take on the story is one of history that builds every time the teams meet. He writes one day before the final regular season playing of the Border War, “If Saturday’s game is the last time the two schools play each other, it will be a fitting tribute to the end of one of the best rivalries in all of college sports”(Fuhrmans). He is trying to appeal to the emotional side of the fans who do not want to see the ending of an era. Besides that he brings in the opinions of Seth Davis who was just talk about and an interview with Kansas Coach Bill Self with STLtoday.com.

Now looking at the “PHOG Blog”, an all things KU athletics blog site we see the author named Mark talk deeply and emotionally about the Kansas-Missouri falling out. He takes about a paragraph and a half to talk about how many basketball commentators and writers have been talking about how KU and mizzou should continue their rivalry games even though mizzou is leaving. He then takes almost the reminder of the post to very carefully say, “There is an old story about a man who had two sons. One joined the SEC. The other became vice-president of the United States. Neither was ever heard from again.” (Mark) In his not so humble opinion Missouri has slapped the Big 12 in the face, and for what reason other than to join a conference where they don’t belong.

The “PHOG Blog” is an extremely bias source, but is also particularly accurate when it comes to things KU related. Mark uses a good about of countering to bring his points to the surface along with straight arguing for the other side. He brings up the points that it’s a very animosity driven rivalry, and that this year alone more attention has been paid to the games because of mizzou leaving the Big 12. However he brings up that:

‘They see two tremendous basketball games and a fight for a conference championship in the final year the two programs are in the same conference and, apparently, believe that this is the norm. It’s not. The norm is KU fighting for a conference championship against some team not named Mizzou: e.g., Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma St, Iowa St.’ (Mark).

This is a very good use of countering to show the true colors of how the Big 12 is supposed to work. However in the end after the animosity the author does come to terms with what many people are thinking and see that if Missouri, somehow, keeps fielding competitive teams he can see the angst in letting the rivalry die.

All in all it is sad to see something I have grown up watching and learning to hate leave. It seems as if the particular circumstances have made it even worse with Missouri being the fourth team to leave the Big 12 in a year. The death of debatably the best rivalry in college sports is overwhelmingly due to the new trend of conference realignment which directly translates into money. I know at least the author of the “PHOG Blog” would agree with me when I say that money and the idea of supper conferences needs to be taken out of collegiate sports.

Works Cited

Mark. "Phog Blog." Web log post. Phog Blog. 26 Feb. 2012. Web. 26 Feb. 2012. .

Davis, Seth. "Kansas Right in Refusal to Schedule Missouri after This Season, More."Kansas-Missouri Demonstrates Pitfalls of Conference Realignment. 6 Feb. 2012. Web. 20 Feb. 2012. .

FUHRMANS, CHRISTOPH FUHRMANS. "Hating You Was Easy, Losing You Is Hard."The Quad. New York Times, 24 Feb. 2012. Web. Feb. 2012. .

Ubben, David. "New Big 12 Will Miss Rivalries, Not Results." Espn. 21 Feb. 2012. Web. Feb. 2012. .

an Approach

From what I could gather “Taking an Approach” is essentially the proses of taking another authors way of doing things or even just the general idea of a text, and transforming it into a way that you use to work your own information into a text. It is not countering or forwarding because you are not simply refuting something or inserting supplementary information, you are actually taking how they worked and using it as a guide to write your own text. I liked the example that Harris used with Aretha Franklin and other performers. He was showing that she took Otis Redding’s manlier version of “Respect” and turned it into her own ode to female independence.

Harris has found three different ways in which we can take an approach acknowledging influences, turning an approach, and reflexivity. Acknowledging influences is mainly literally saying in a work where the model you are writing in is from or is based off of. Turning an approach on itself is more or less taking the way another author might question or analyze information, and doing the same or similar to what they have written. Finally reflexivity is taking a look at the different choices in things like method and language and noting/ talking about why those choices were made.

change?

I have chosen to revisit the first paragraph of my post titled “Extra Extra, read all about it”. Where we were talking about where we get our news and how we know what’s going on in the world. I chose this because I feel like I didn’t quit say what I wanted to and now I have a greater understanding of the subject I was trying to talk about.

side note, by far the hardest post.

Original

Through my first year of college I have been finding that kids are not necessarily staying on top of current news, but somehow still know what is going on in the world. This leads to questions like, where are they reading their news stories? How much do they actually look into things? Do they actually read news, or are they just seeing things on FaceBook? Knowing most of my friends, unfortunately, Facebook is the most use form of news. This, in my opinion, is not a very good thing. As I see it, when people post news stories on facebook they are often one-sided, miss leading, or just fake sensationalist stories. But, facebook can be go good source of new that is happening right now. As stories are changing and more information is given, facebook can also change with the stories. It has provided and place where people can post and talk about things right as they are developing. One just has to be aware that not ever thing can be instantly trusted.

New

Throughout my first year of college I have been able to notice that many of the people I interact with are surprisingly well versed in current events. However, they do not claim that they read something in the paper or heard it on the local news. This just begs the question, where are they getting their information? Well with must the people I talk with that are my age the overwhelming answer is good old Facebook. This can be seen as a bad thing, why you might ask? Well for starters there isn’t anyone patrolling FB determining if a story is true or false, but really there is no one doing that elsewhere either. It takes an entire population to determine if something is true or news worthy, so it is really on the community of FB and other social cites that people use to post stories to weed out false or inaccurate news.

Facebook has found a very unique spot in modern media and the sharing of news. With its ability to draw people in and be instantly undated, FB has become a standard of information sharing for this generation. News is now instantly uploaded and can change just as fast as the original changes. One just has to be aware that not ever thing can be instantly trusted.

Harris on Countering

Harris’s chapter on countering begins with a part of a Monty Python skit that is supposed to be a paid for argument. However it is obvious that it is no argument, but it is blatant contradiction. I think Harris chose to use this as an opening example to try and show that his idea of countering another’s position is in no way supposed to be straight contradiction, but a civil and scholarly process. As Harris puts it, (and I forward it) “Countering looks at other views and texts not as wrong but as partial- in the sense of being both interested and incomplete.”(56) He then goes on to say, “the aim of countering is to develop a new line of thinking in response to the limits of other texts.”(57) So countering is not what I originally thought, there just so happens to be a much more involved process. Harris describes three different ways in which we counter another’s works; they are Arguing the other side, Uncovering, and lastly Dissenting. All of which begin with the understanding or coming to terms with the text, because one must understand both the strong and weak points of a text to be able to intelligently talk about it let alone work against it.

In the Phog Blog it is almost fun to see the ways in which the author counters the national pollsters and sports analysts. He has created a new type of ranking system within the big 12 that in a lot of ways goes against the typical system, but it makes so much more sense! That in my eyes is a great counter.

Forwarding

Harris seems to have this writing stuff on lock. He describes a proses that he calls forwarding that is more or less taking what a source tells you and using it to show a point. Or as he puts it, “a writer forwards a text by taking words, images, or ideas from it and putting them to use in new contexts.”(37) In Harris’s eyes the job of forwarding is to extent the range of a text and to test its limitations. In forwarding he points out four ways in which it’s done: Illustration, Authorizing, borrowing, and extending. These four are all ways in which a scholarly writer will take others information and use it to show, define, or make a reader think about their information or ideas.

Looking at the Phog Blog it is rather clear to see that most posts have at least some essence of forwarding. Right off the back every post uses the AP polls for basketball rankings, and sense the lovely author of most the posts on Phog blog is not the creator of the AP polls he is forwarding his readers the information from another source. He also brings in examples that other sports writers and commentators have brought to light. However, because the particular blog I’m following is extremely bias towards the Big 12 and more specifically KU, the bigger picture of college basketball is often over looked. But really, that is mostly the author’s choice. He has chosen a much closed audience for his blog, so he is able to be a little non inclusive of information that does not involve KU.

Just not the same

Unfortunately the Phog Blog is not really in line with the New York Times, except when talking about the sports section. Then it rivals the NYT in college basketball coverage. The NYT’s goal however is not to go into scrupulous detail about the inner workings of the Big Twelve conference. That’s what media outlets like the Phog Blog are for!

This shows a perfect example of Jeff Jarvis’s idea of the fluid ‘Press Sphere”. The NYT does report on college basketball but not extremely specific because face it, there are just too many teams and conferences to do everything justice. This is where things like the Phog Blog and entities like it begin to taking basic information put out by big sources like the NYT and crafting it to a specific audience where it can spread more easily. Then once it spreads, the stories can grow and smaller sources receive instant feedback for them to produce another story. In turn the new, possibly bigger and better, story is hopefully picked back up by a major news source and re distributed to the masses.

Jeff Jarvis's Press Sphere

In Jeff Jarvis’s eyes the news industry has completely changed in how news is now created, talked about, and discovered. It is no longer journalists working to put together the daily news. Now it is more along the lines of a journalist constantly spitting out bits and pieces of stories as they come, and the news that is produced is more fluid which allows the stories to grow over time. As Jarvis puts it, “Now a story never begins and it never ends… (it) in whatever medium — is merely a blip on the line, a stage in a process, for that process continues after publication.” This has all changed with the now wide spread use of mobile media from online newspapers to even Facebook more often than one would think. He sees the “Press Sphere” as all the different influences on a story from the journalist to organizations and even the readers; it is coexisting self-driving system.

Jarvis’s view on the change in media makes complete sense. It has become perfectly visible as well in the twenty-four hour news media like CNN and Fox News. Shows on those types of networks will draw feedback from places like twitter and facebook live on air, and report on it like it is cold hard news. However this is an extreme case and the constant flow of news should not be seen in a bad way. It needs to be embraced and unutilized by the public, because a well-informed public is better capable of running a successful society.

Phog Blog Analysis

The purpose of the “Phog Blog” is to convey endless information about University of Kansas basketball and also information surrounding the Big 12 has a whole. The posts, most if not all, written by a KU journalism student named Mark are very enthusiastic towards Kansas succeeding and Missouri failing. Because of this, the audience is obviously KU fans. Mark talks about “REAL standings” by this he is talking about the discrepancy in what the poll rankings are, and what they should logically be. This blog is extremely limited in the fact that is written to appeal to KU fans, not many other people. This however has not taken away from the factualness of the blog; the information is all true just presented in a particular way.

The Blog I Shall Follow

I have chosen to follow The Phog Blog. A bog that is everything KU Basketball. I feel this is appropriate because it getting closer and closer to March Madness, the basketball community will be constantly buzzing with news and stories. Also I live breath and eat University of Kansas Basketball

Here is a link to the Blog of all blogs

http://phogblog.com/

Enjoy!

where do they get their news?

Well surprise surprise, almost the entirety of the class gathers there news from over the internet; or Snapple bottles in one case. However, this finding is not surprising in the least. The pattern was almost too easy to see. The most commonly used sources for news are New York Times and Yahoo news like places. Personally, as someone who enjoys reading a newspaper, I found it almost saddening that many people don’t utilize print news sources. But, it is understandable with more and more newspapers being available online. It was also very nice to see that people are not just relying on the 24 hour news networks/ their respective websites. Sources like Foxnews, MSNBC, and CNN are almost always bias towards their respective parties (republican demarcate). When people only look at these they can often have a more closed minded view of the issues.

We as a whole class are a perfect case study of our generation. We have adopted the new technology and integrated it with the only way of getting information; print news and radio broadcasts have turned into online news and video clips. This is not a bad thing, but it is changing the media as we know it.

Revised paper

Colin McMaster

WRIT 1122- 39

Professor Leake

30 January 2012

I have chosen to write this essay towards a person that is their college career. I chose that group people because this issue is most pressing to them, they are directly impacted by the developing use of the internet and online mediums.

Writing and Reading with Comprehension

Picture yourself, at your computer. It’s just like any other time you open your laptop at home or in class. Nine times out of ten a betting man would say that Facebook is the first thing to pop up. This is just a showing of how our generation is addicted to social media and constantly staying connected. Also it shows that we just plain get bored and want some simple entertainment. This search for constant entertainment is changing the way in which kids of the current generation are using the internet and that is also changing the way that we read and write.

Chris Hedges does not have the nicest opinion of the general American public. He sees us as only two classes of people, the literate people who are capable of complex thought and live in a print-based world. Then there is the other kind of people, the ones who can not read and write, rely on images for information, and have severed them self’s from the print-based world. This is a very basic and pessimistic view of our society, but is it really all that far off? We often do find ourselves avoiding doing things that will make us think hard or might make us go out of our way.

Hedges also discusses how the illiterate class is becoming more and more easily swayed by political rhetoric and the news media. This I feel is overwhelmingly true however it is not limited to just the illiterate. Even scholarly people can find themselves wrapped up in an extremely sensational news story to only finish it and feel almost less intelligent. The news we watch on TV and often read is unfortunately watered down to the point where it almost loses all of its credibility. Yet, people still trust it, and only it. When that happens and the television news isn’t reinforced with factual print articles, a person is left not fully informed and is not necessarily equipped with the right knowledge to let’s say pick a president. Candidates can easily fill their campaigns with easy to digest ideas and words that seem like they solve problems, but really just mask the problem and make themselves look better. They can get away with it because the “illiterate people” as Hedges puts it, just absorb and do not critically analyze it.

Through high school I was blessed with one of the knowledgeable teachers I think I will ever meet. Dr. Jim Harris is a PHD from the University of Kansas in Electrical engineering. He formerly owned his own company making electronic components for helicopters before retiring to teach at my high school. Dr. Harris was responsible for teaching the school physics, Honors physics, AP physics, and Astronomy. He had one very strong common theme that he tried to teach all of his classes, and that is “one, Physicists are lazy and two, read with comprehension”. He was under the impression that if his students could learn to read a question or text and understand it fully, he has succeeded in his lesson. According to Nicholas Carr however, we may be taking a step in the wrong direction.

Nicholas Carr finds himself asking the question, “is Google making us stupid?’ In his opinion we might be, but he does not really know if it is. Carr seems to have found himself in a not so good place, he can no longer pay attention to longer readings even if they are longer blog posts. This phenomenon seems to be happening more and more to him and his friends. I also find myself struggling to stay focused after a couple paragraphs. He thinks that our brains have possible reprogramed themselves to only enjoy short little streams of information, like a computer. He thinks that the constant internet browsing, only looking at short headlines, and going from video to video has reprogramed our brains to only except information, “the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.”(Carr 1) That thought seems kind of scary when you listen to it. Something as arbitrary as the internet forcing our brains to change the way we think, no sir I’ll have none of that.

I don’t think that the internet is changing the way we read really, it has more the effect of changing what we are expecting to read. We find it easier to read smaller things that interest us and can be supplemented with videos we can pull up at random or quickly switch to a page that explains any confusion. We haven’t lost the ability to read books or long articles, we have just developed laziness towards reading or maybe even an internet induced ADD. This would make sense of our obsession with Facebook and YouTube; we are simply using them as vises for our “disorder”. We are still capable of reading in the old way; it’s just not nearly as fun. So, the internet isn’t so much making us stupid, it is just changing our perception of what reading should be. We go online to “avoid reading in the traditional sense.” (Carr 2)

Like with the printing press, some people believe that having vast knowledge available at our fingertips will detriment society by causing academic laziness and making an intellectual rely on a computer to reiterate his knowledge. But just like the printing press and the positives being over looked, even when the negatives were true, those overlooked positives made the printing press an easy way for people to share, spread, and spark new knowledge and learning.

With technology and the internet creating large gaps in the reading levels and things are becoming more available to the masses, what is happening to peoples writing? The internet has created a whole new place for people in instantly connect and share ideas. Most noticeable of these are places like blogger and Facebook. According to Andrea A. Lunsford and Clive Thompson kids are writing more than ever. Lunsford studied the writing of 189 Stanford students starting there freshmen year through graduation. What she and her colleges found gives hope that technology is not destroying our literacy. They found that students are writing significantly more than their parents did. Kids are writing not just school papers, but all the interaction on the internet is a form of writing. According to Lunsford writing in these different mediums has given us an advantage. The internet has not harmed writing but, “rather than leading to a new illiteracy, these activities seemed to help them develop a range or repertoire of writing styles, tones, and formats along with a range of abilities.”(Lunsford 1)

Lunsford’s team found that the students had a remarkable knack at writing in the style, “kairos—assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across.” (Thompson 1) This new knack of writing to a specific audience comes hand in hand with the internet. When writing a Facebook post, blog post, or just a tweet we know exactly who our audience is and write to get our idea or thought across to exactly who is seeing the post.

The internet has caused many shifts in the world we live in today. We have gone from a word were you could maybe get a newspaper two times a day, to a reality that news from every corner of the world is available with just a few clicks of a mouse. Being able to have everything so close has indeed made us lazy, as Carr and Hedges would agree with; but it also has created a generation that can write affectively that Lunsford and Thompson agree with. The difficulty is, literacy is both reading and writing, not just one. The problem with reading on the internet is that it makes us want to be there and enjoy ourselves while reading. After watching videos and reading short news reels no one want to read 200 pages out of a boring book. Our reading has become weaker simply because it seems to no longer be capturing out imagination. On the other hand writing is excelling because of the ever changing conversation on the internet. People are more aware of who their writing is going to and will tailor it to suit the audience. To bridge the gap between excelling writing and lazy reading, I believe teachers need to employ Dr. Harris’s approach. By making reading with comprehension a main goal, it can be possible to teach kids to read past false information and extract true meaning from online souses and mediums.

extra extra, read all about it

Through my first year of college I have been finding that kids are not necessarily staying on top of current news, but somehow still know what is going on in the world. This leads to questions like, where are they reading their news stories? How much do they actually look into things? Do they actually read news, or are they just seeing things on FaceBook? Knowing most of my friends, unfortunately, Facebook is the most use form of news. This, in my opinion, is not a very good thing. As I see it, when people post news stories on facebook they are often one-sided, miss leading, or just fake sensationalist stories. But, facebook can be go good source of new that is happening right now. As stories are changing and more information is given, facebook can also change with the stories. It has provided and place where people can post and talk about things right as they are developing. One just has to be aware that not ever thing can be instantly trusted.

Usually most of my news will come from local and national evening new broadcasts, the local newspaper, and online sites from the New York Times to Drudge Report. I really find politics and other worldly discussions very interesting and worth following. Unfortunately it takes a lot of time to stay up to date with all the news so recently I have been lagging behind the discussion. Utilizing the internet to run through news headlines is becoming more and more convenient. However it is important to keep in mind while using the internet for news that many of the sites will be bias. So it is especially important to make sure both sides of the stories are heard.

Essay roughdraft

Colin McMaster

WRIT 1122- 39

Professor Leake

30 January 2012

I have chosen to write this essay towards a person that is their college career. I chose that group people because this issue is most pressing to them, they are directly impacted by the developing use of the internet and online mediums.

Writing and Reading with Comprehension

Picture yourself, at your computer. It’s just like any other time you open your laptop at home or in class. Nine times out of ten a betting man would say that Facebook is the first thing to pop up. This is just a showing of how our generation is addicted to social media and constantly staying connected. Also it shows that we just plain get bored and want some simple entertainment. This search for constant entertainment is changing the way in which kids of the current generation are using the internet and that is also changing the way that we read and write.

Chris Hedges does not have the nicest opinion of the general American public. He sees us as only two classes of people, the literate people who are capable of complex thought and live in a print-based world. Then there is the other kind of people, the ones who can not read and write, rely on images for information, and have severed them self’s from the print-based world. This is a very basic and pessimistic view of our society, but is it really all that far off? We often do find ourselves avoiding doing things that will make us think hard or might make us go out of our way.

Hedges also discusses how the illiterate class is becoming more and more easily swayed by political rhetoric and the news media. This I feel is overwhelmingly true however it is not limited to just the illiterate. Even scholarly people can find themselves wrapped up in an extremely sensational news story to only finish it and feel almost less intelligent. The news we watch on TV and often read is unfortunately watered down to the point where it almost loses all of its credibility. Yet, people still trust it, and only it. When that happens and the television news isn’t reinforced with factual print articles, a person is left not fully informed and is not necessarily equipped with the right knowledge to let’s say pick a president. Candidates can easily fill their campaigns with easy to digest ideas and words that seem like they solve problems, but really just mask the problem and make themselves look better. They can get away with it because the “illiterate people” as Hedges puts it, just absorb and do not critically analyze it.

Through high school I was blessed with one of the knowledgeable teachers I think I will ever meet. Dr. Jim Harris is a PHD from the University of Kansas in Electrical engineering. He formerly owned his own company making electronic components for helicopters before retiring to teach at my high school. Dr. Harris was responsible for teaching the school physics, Honors physics, AP physics, and Astronomy. He had one very strong common theme that he tried to teach all of his classes, and that is “one, Physicists are lazy and two, read with comprehension”. He was under the impression that if his students could learn to read a question or text and understand it fully, he has succeeded in his lesson. According to Nicholas Carr however, we may be taking a step in the wrong direction.

Nicholas Carr finds himself asking the question, “is Google making us stupid?’ In his opinion we might be, but he does not really know if it is. Carr seems to have found himself in a not so good place, he can no longer pay attention to longer readings even if they are longer blog posts. This phenomenon seems to be happening more and more to him and his friends. I also find myself struggling to stay focused after a couple paragraphs. He thinks that our brains have possible reprogramed themselves to only enjoy short little streams of information, like a computer. He thinks that the constant internet browsing, only looking at short headlines, and going from video to video has reprogramed our brains to only except information, “the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.”(Carr 1) That thought seems kind of scary when you listen to it. Something as arbitrary as the internet forcing our brains to change the way we think, no sir I’ll have none of that.

I don’t think that the internet is changing the way we read really, it has more the effect of changing what we are expecting to read. We find it easier to read smaller things that interest us and can be supplemented with videos we can pull up at random or quickly switch to a page that explains any confusion. We haven’t lost the ability to read books or long articles, we have just developed laziness towards reading or maybe even an internet induced ADD. This would make sense of our obsession with Facebook and YouTube; we are simply using them as vises for our “disorder”. We are still capable of reading in the old way; it’s just not nearly as fun. So, the internet isn’t so much making us stupid, it has just changed what we look for in reading. We go online to “avoid reading in the traditional sense.” (2)

Like with the printing press, some people believe that having vast knowledge available at our fingertips will detriment society by causing academic laziness and making an intellectual rely on a computer to reiterate his knowledge. But just like the printing press and the positives being over looked, even when the negatives were true, those overlooked positives made the printing press an easy way for people to share, spread, and spark new knowledge and learning.

With technology and the internet creating large gaps in the reading levels and things are becoming more available to the masses, what is happening to peoples writing? The internet has created a whole new place for people in instantly connect and share ideas. Most noticeable of these are places like blogger and Facebook. According to Andrea A. Lunsford and Clive Thompson kids are writing more than ever. Lunsford studied the writing of 189 Stanford students starting there freshmen year through graduation. What she and her colleges found gives hope that technology is not destroying our literacy. They found that students are writing significantly more than their parents did. Kids are writing not just school papers, but all the interaction on the internet is a form of writing. According to Lunsford writing in these different mediums has given us an advantage. The internet has not harmed writing but, “rather than leading to a new illiteracy, these activities seemed to help them develop a range or repertoire of writing styles, tones, and formats along with a range of abilities.”(Lunsford 1)

Lunsford’s team found that the students had a remarkable knack at writing in the style, “kairos—assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across.” (Thompson 1) This new knack of writing to a specific audience comes hand in hand with the internet. When writing a Facebook post, blog post, or just a tweet we know exactly who our audience is and write to get our idea or thought across to exactly who is seeing the post.

The internet has caused many shifts in the world we live in today. We have gone from a word were you could maybe get a newspaper two times a day, to a reality that news from every corner of the world is available with just a few clicks of a mouse. Being able to have everything so close has indeed made us lazy, as Carr and Hedges would agree with; but it also has created a generation that can write affectively that Lunsford and Thompson agree with. The difficulty is, literacy is both reading and writing, not just one. The problem with reading on the internet is that it makes us want to be there and enjoy ourselves while reading. After watching videos and reading short news reels no one want to read 200 pages out of a boring book. Our reading has become weaker simply because it seems to no longer be capturing out imagination. On the other hand writing is excelling because of the ever changing conversation on the internet. People are more aware of who their writing is going to and will tailor it to suit the audience. To bridge the gap between excelling writing and lazy reading, I believe teachers need to employ Dr. Harris’s approach. By making reading with comprehension a main goal, it can be possible to teach kids to read past false information and extract true meaning from online souses and mediums.

the end of the beginning

Here I stand 4 weeks after starting a blog, and I’m still alive. It turns out that blogging is not the evil I once saw it as, of course that was before I fully understood it. I see now that blogs aren’t bad, instant sources of false information. They can be places of valid idea sharing and where people can further discussions about topics that interest them. Personally, the whole talk about whether or not the internet and technology is influencing us for the better or worse is starting to rub off on me. I see myself becoming more conscious of what I write and read on the internet. More importantly my web habits have drastically changed. I now find myself not endlessly creeping facebook, but instead actually getting my work done then checking. After seeing how my fellow classmates along with myself were abusing the internet for enjoyment while we all had work to do, made me change. I do sometimes still get distracted but I’m TRYING to do better.

By far the hardest thing about writing a blog has been trying to start writing, and then trying to stay on topic. I always feel like I ramble on and on and eventually end up way too far away from my starting subject. It slowly got better, but I was just out of practice writing in such a free way. That might just be what all of this is about, getting away from old restricting ways and letting the creative side loose.

The other side

Scribner and Thompson have now shed the light on the other side of this whole idea that the internet is killing America’s literacy. Their combined literacy metaphors and Harvard research made the American literacy problem seem just a little bit less extreme. In fact the light they shed on the “new” style of literacy makes it seem as if our technology and new ways of writing are helping to promote kids literary skills. Scribner does a good job of bringing in examples that relate literacy to people’s social and economic status as well as showing that literacy just has a perpetually changing meaning. However it does cross my mind that Scribner did write this in the eighties, and a little bit has changed. So how valid is it? I think that it is still valid, because the ideas and instances are set in history, which we must always take into account.

Thompson’s article really caught me by surprise. I was not expecting to agree or appreciate this until I read it. He has the great point that, “writing is about persuading and organizing and debating, even if it's over something as quotidian as what movie to go see”. I believe in this whole heartedly. Thompson found that kids are writing in this style more, and this style is called kairos. Or writing for a specific audience, purpose, and writing in the moment. All of which I can honestly say do seem to be happening a little more easily for myself. There is one limitation however, this new writing that is emerging in this time of technology will only hold valid IF youth and people in general keep the practices of Reading with comprehension and higher level thinking. We must still fight to stay out of a picture and media run state.

illiterate America

Chris Hedges does not have the nicest opinion of the general American public. He sees us as only two classes of people, the literate people who are capable of complex thought and live in a print-based world. The other kind of people are the ones who can not read and write, rely on images for information, and have severed them self’s from the print-based world. This is a very basic and pessimistic view of our society, but is it really all that far off? We often do find ourselves avoiding doing things that will make us think hard or might make us go out of our way. Not unlike what Nicholas Carr believe has happened to our society and reading, we are simply doing less of it because it’s hard.

Hedges also discusses how the illiterate class is becoming more and more swayed by political rhetoric and the news media. This I feel is overwhelmingly true however it is not limited to just the illiterate. Even scholarly people can find themselves wrapped up in an extremely sensational news story to only finish it and feel almost less intelligent. The news we watch on tv is unfortunately watered down to the point where it almost loses all of its credibility. Yet, people still trust it, and only it. When that happens and the television news isn’t reinforced with factual print articles, a person is left not fully informed and is not necessarily equipped with the right knowledge to let’s say pick a president.

Goole = ADD

SO, is Google making us stupid? In Nicholas Carr’s opinion, well he doesn’t really know either. Carr seems to have found himself in a not so good place, he can no longer pay attention to a long reading even if it’s a blog post. He thinks that our brains have reprogramed themselves to only enjoy short little streams of information, like a computer. He thinks that the constant internet browsing, only looking at short headlines, and going from video to video has reprogramed our brains to only except information, “the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.” That thought seems kind of scary when you listen to it. Something as arbitrary as the internet forcing our brains to change the way they think, no sir I’ll have none of that.

I don’t think that the internet is changing the way we read really, it has more the effect of changing what we are Expecting to read. We find it easier to read smaller things that interest us and can supplement it with videos we can pull up at random. We haven’t lost the ability to read books or long articles, we have just developed laziness towards reading or maybe even an internet induced ADD. This would make sense of our obsession with Facebook and Youtube, we are simply using them as vises for our “disorder”. We are still capable of reading in the old way; it’s just not nearly as fun. So, the internet isn’t so much making us stupid, it has just changed what we look for in reading.

From blogging to Rewriting

Joseph Harris’s goal with his book Rewriting: How to do things with texts was not to provide a manual for writing, but to teach people how to take other peoples words in scholarly writing and use them for your own purpose. This I am thankful for. I like to think that I know how to write, but I do still need work on analyzing and using other scholarly works in my own writing to make a point. Harris finds this to be at the heart of all writing, to add to or respond to another’s writing in order to add to the conversation. This is also what I think writing should be. Using others work not just to defend your work, but to add upon and create meaning from another’s work.

Sullivan and Harris both see writing as way to convey information to readers. However Harris’s take is in a much more structured and scholarly direction.

save time

After looking at my fellow classmates’ use of the internet and comparing it to my own, I’m only left with one question. WHAT ARE WE DOING WITH OUR TIME?! (sorry for the cap attack) I’m just as big of an offender as any but seriously Facebook has taken over, or it will. Yes, not all time we waste on the internet is actually wasted but it quickly can become wasted with the introduction of StumbleUpon and Facebook drama. That’s why I am finding it important to wean myself of my Facebook impulse. The goal is to rid myself of the all too common idea that “sense I’m on the internet, I’ll go ahead and get on Facebook”. Hopefully it is possible and will help with my productivity levels. I am really hoping that if I end up saving loads of time, the time can go towards activities I like or even surfing productive websites like Ted or News sources.

Also while looking at others use of the internet is was interesting to see that more or less everyone seemed to make an effort to at least look at news. That to me is the most important thing about our generation. We need to pay extra attention to the events that surround us and not get sucked in to Facebook land. Facebook land is purely social and will wait for you; the real world is constantly going on and waits for no one. We need to be well informed because one day it will be our job to run this world.

2 Days in my Computers History

SUNDAY

11:30am-12; Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Black Board.

Checked email and Facebook like normal morning. Printed off a few assignments from blackboard, and took a reading quiz.

2:00-3:00; YouTube, WIMP.com, blogger, Stumble.. Facebook

Typical video watching while writing a blog and working on Engineering. Continued my steady addiction of stumbling for hours on end.

7:00-9ish; Facebook, Stumble, Web central, blackboard, New York Times, Colbert Report and Daily Show cites, Drudge report.

Took my time doing various homework assignments while creeping on facebook. Then took time to watch news clips and read some articals.

11:50- bed; Late night Facebook creep and funny video watching from Facebook and wimp.

MONDAY

7:00-7:30; Check Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Blackboard before heading to class for the day.

8:00- around 4; On and off of Facebook, Blackboard, WebCentral, New York Times, Wichita Eagle.

Random and sporadic check of webcites when I have time during class.

6-7:30- Gmail, WebCentral, WolfRamAlpha, and Facebook

A strictly business trip to the internet, accomplishing physics homework, but what’s homework without a little Facebook.

12-12:30; More late night facebook and twitter. Skype with a friend back home.

Let’s face it, I’m addicted to Facebook. I can live with that because it is a functional addiction, unfortunately. My internet habits, in my opinion, are not that strange. Facebook is almost like a nervous tick, the instant my browser is open or I’m waiting for something to load, I’m checking facebook. Other than that I enjoy wasting time watching videos, many from news web sites, or just plan YouTube and stumble. Of course, there’s the constant Email and blackboard checking to keep up with school work. My impact on the internet is not that great, the occasional wall post or status update. One of my favorite things to do will always be to find videos, often of epic music nature, and share them with my Facebook friend and I get to see others find enjoyment out of the same things.

Making my blog.

Creating a blog turns out to be one of the easiest things to do on the internet. Besides maybe getting credit card information stolen. I had no idea that creating a blog would be so easy. I was under the impression that it would take time and be cumbersome to do, I was wrong. Before now I have never kept a blog because I have never seen a reason to start. I find that some blogs are good and fun to read, but there are a greater number of blogs out there full of balderdash and hate. Those I find highly offensive and unnecessary. However everyone is entitled to their free speech even if it’s not the best thing to write about in public.

People have often told me that keeping a facebook updated is just like having a blog, and I have always been on the side that they are very much different. In my opinion blogs are for the sharing of ideas across a vast amount of people, not necessarily for the purpose of following peoples/friends lives. Facebook is aimed, in my opinion, to make social networking instant and easily available. Facebook does have statuses that are similar to mini blog posts, but it is usually frowned upon to post long rants that anger people. Were the blog steps up to fill the gap. It is my hope that in the near future blogging becomes a more enjoyable experience for not only myself, but for all users of the internet.

Why Andrew Sullivan Blogs

Andrew Sullivan has been blogging sense before it was cool, an obvious blog hipster. He took the blog to a whole new level and has essentially made it an everyday job. He took the qualities of a daily news column and made it instant, “a blog is not so much daily writing as hourly writing.” Sullivan sees blogging as so instantaneous and in the now that is it comparable with what extreme sports is to athletics. To Sullivan the act of blogging became almost like an act of writing out a stream of consciousness. He found it to be “literary liberation”, his mind could speak about whatever it wanted, with next to no repercussions. With the freedom to say anything that comes to mind, comes the responsibility to be accountable. Sullivan finds blogging to be a great form of free writing because of the responsibility one must take when writing for an instant and intelligent audience. The blog also is a nice atmosphere because it forces the writer to be emotionally involved and get personal with posts. When writing multiple times a day reactionary posts are easily flooded with emotion that can show someone’s true colors.

The main thing that the blog lives for is the conversation. As long as people are engaged in the discussing of ideas intelligently, the blog will always have a place in day to day conversation.